2014 White Award Book Winners Announced

EMPORIA, KAN. — Tragedy on national and personal scales are the topics of books selected by Kansas schoolchildren as the winners of the 2014 William Allen White Children’s Book Awards.

“America is Under Attack: September 11, 2001: The Day the Towers Fell,” by Don Brown was selected by voters in grades 3 through 5.

“Hidden,” by Helen Frost, was selected by voters in grades 6 through 8.

Brown’s book tells the events of Sept. 11, 2001. In the fourth installment of the Actual Times series, Brown narrates the events of the day in an accessible and understandable way for young readers. Straightforward and honest, this account moves chronologically through the morning, from the plane hijackings to the crashes at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania; from the rescue operations at the WTC site to the collapse of the buildings.

“Hidden” leads readers through a world of contradictions, told by two characters’ alternating points of view about the one experience they have in common. In a chance encounter at camp, the girls face each other for the first time. They can finally learn the truth if they are willing to trust each other. This novel-in-poems reveals the complexities of memory and the strength of friendship.

The William Allen White Children’s Book Award program was founded in 1952 by Ruth Garver Gagliardo, a specialist in children’s literature for Emporia State University. One of the few literary awards that asks young readers to choose the winners, the program is directed by Emporia State University and supported in part by the Trusler Foundation.

Meet the Authors

Don Brown is the award-winning author and illustrator of many picture book biographies. He has been widely praised for his resonant storytelling and his delicate watercolor paintings that evoke the excitement, humor, pain, and joy of lives lived with passion. School Library Journal has called him “a current pacesetter who has put the finishing touches on the standards for storyographies.” He lives in New York with his family.

Helen Frost was born in Brookings, South Dakota,the fifth of ten children. She graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Elementary Education and a concentration in English, with Philip Booth and W. D. Snodgrass among her teachers. She received her Masters degree in English from Indiana University in 1994. She is the recipient of a 2009 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship.